Tag Archives: false flag attacks

In a recent interview [March 27th] given to Jan Frel of Alternet, Noam Chomsky suggested that when people become aware Trump’s promises are “built on sand”, to maintain his popularity he might be tempted to stage a terrorist event:

I think that we shouldn’t put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly.

The other possibility is a staged attack of a minor kind. And how hard would that be? Take the FBI technique, which they’re using constantly, of creating situations of entrapment. Well, suppose one of them goes a little too far, that you don’t stop it right in time. That wouldn’t be hard to work out. I don’t particularly anticipate it, but it’s a possibility.

Click here to read the full transcript and to watch the interview on the Democracy Now! website.

Although careful to avoid the term, Chomsky is alerting us to the possibility of false flag attacks; a valid concern given how “black ops” of this kind have a well-documented history whether it comes to manufacturing consent for wars (Gulf of Tonkin, USS Liberty), scapegoating opponents (Reichstag Fire, COINTELPRO) or more straightforwardly building and escalating a ‘strategy of tension’.

Chomsky also rightly draws attention to the repeated entrapment of ‘terrorist suspects’ by the FBI – a tactic I covered in this earlier piece – and to the possibility that “one of them goes a little too far”. Presumably he knows about former Egyptian army officer and FBI informant Emad Salem and the murky role he played in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993:

But Chomsky is also well aware that false flag attacks are not the province of the President or his administration. That “black ops” are, of necessity, ‘deep state’ enterprises – planned and executed by intelligence services and/or private contractors with the skills needed to carry them out. Even “a staged attack of a minor kind” involves advanced planning and is not done on the whim of any President.

Trump is certainly a con man with gangland connections, and his presidency is a rising threat to all of us. But the surmise that he or any other President can just click his fingers to conjure up a false flag attack merely to improve poll ratings is pure fantasy. Chomsky knows better than that. So why is he saying this? Why now?